Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.
Acting
Hideko Takamine's face contains entire novels of unspoken defeat.
Direction
Naruse's flowing camera finds beauty in Fumiko's relentless downward spiral.
Editing
Elliptical structure mirrors memory's cruelty — what we skip hurts most.
Director
Mikio Naruse
Hideko Takamine
Fumiko Hayashi
Akira Takarada
Fukuya
Daisuke Katō
Nobuo Sadaoka
Keiju Kobayashi
Fujiyama
Kinuyo Tanaka
Kishi, Fumiko's Mother
Mitsuko Kusabue
Kyôko Hinatsu
Noboru Nakaya
Haruhiko Itatsu
Yūnosuke Itō
Gorô Shirasaka
Jun Tatara
Tamura
Masao Oda
Fumiko's Father
Takeshi Katō
Uenoyama
Natsuko Kahara
Chōko Iida
Machiko Kitagawa
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Naruse and Takamine made 17 films together; she called him 'the only director who understood women like me.' This was their penultimate collaboration.
Hayashi's actual novels — particularly 'Floating Clouds' and 'Diary of a Vagabond' — became postwar classics about women surviving economic ruin. Naruse had already adapted 'Floating Clouds' in 1955.
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